Game Transparency

[MrMyth]

So my choices are to hack the site, or get illegal pdfs of the material? Thats not impossible but its wrong.

Not being willing to purchase the article is different from being incapable of doing so. (If you are in a situation where you have no payment options available that WotC will accept - and I know some are - that is a legitimate reason to claim you cannot read the article.)

But in either case, given you haven't read the article itself, your attacks on its perceived faults are way out of line. And that was a choice you had - to either not comment on something of which you have no direct knowledge, or to at the very least avoid taking such a hostile and inflammatory tone while spouting inaccuracies and attacks on other gamers. Avoiding doing so is an option that is always available.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's a good article. It's helped me wrap my mind around what the world might look like for some 4e-specific mechanics pretty well, and I'm an old hand at this thing. ENWorld could do the same thing, but until WotC starts charging for access to ENWorld, I think the article's existence is a positive. More people hearing the message is better.

 

[Dyson Logos]

We typically use a very low level of game mechanic transparency in the majority of our games. But we transmit a lot of game material across regardless, as per the descriptions of reduced transparency in this article. When you miss an attack roll by a few points, the GM describes the event as a near miss (or in D&D, as a hit that did no damage, bouncing off the opponent's shield or armor plating). When a creature is getting ready an uber attack, it takes a deep breath in the round prior to launching a breath weapon, or the bad guy flips a switch on his gun, engaging the secondary magazine, or the equivalent.

I do like how the article describes how to do this without metagaming. For GMs and players new to the genre, or who have never tried playing in this style, it is quite instructional.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Your choice would be to either get the article in a legal way and read and discuss it OR not to get it, not to read it and (subsequentally) not to discuss it. Problem solved.
Thats really the same procedure as for the print magazines.

This. My point is that you can subscribe and read the article. You choose not to. Again, it's absolutely your choice to make, but it was a choice, not an option that was somehow taken away from you.

 

[Logan_Bonner]

Would you make it Windows-only too?

For what it's worth, I've had pretty good luck using virtualization software to run the Character Builder. VirtualBox is a free program. I already had a copy of XP, though, so it's tougher for a longtime Mac user.

 

[Jack99]

I wonder how much we could charge for D&D Outsider. You subscribe and we publicly announce that you are emphatically not a D&D Insider subscriber.

 

[Lanefan]

This. My point is that you can subscribe and read the article. You choose not to. Again, it's absolutely your choice to make, but it was a choice, not an option that was somehow taken away from you.

True.

The option that was taken away was flipping through the magazine in the store, to see if it had enough useful (to me) content this issue to make it worth buying.

In this particular instance, I still don't want to subscribe to all of DDI just to read one article.

Lanefan

 

[Truename]

I wonder how much we could charge for D&D Outsider. You subscribe and we publicly announce that you are emphatically not a D&D Insider subscriber.

For maximum customer satisfaction, you should also announce that you have carefully considered their game preferences, and how to best sabotage them, in the design of that month's materials.

(Personally, I would be much happier if people who have not read an article would refrain from commenting on how much it sucks. )

 

[malraux]

(Personally, I would be much happier if people who have not read an article would refrain from commenting on how much it sucks. )

I kinda think that complaints about non-paper versions are in the same category as lack of mac software. If asked about what sorts of changes you want, its legit to chime in with, but not in random threads.

 

[mach1.9pants]

(Personally, I would be much happier if people who have not read an article would refrain from commenting on how much it sucks. )

I agree with this.

And I have a new sig LOL